The Turbo Duo on PC

[takashirose]

I have a Turbo Duo, but I want my cousin to try Lords of Thunder for himself.  Therefore I thought about burning him a copy.  I was wondering whether there is a way to play Duo games on a pc?  Any perfect free emulators?

[Joe Redifer]

Not free ones.  I think the Turbo has the only emulator that actually charges.  Not sure, though.

[Keranu]

Yame is a decent free one, probably the best in my opinion. Some other free ones are Hu-Go!, some other Hu-one, and Mednafen. Magic Engine is the only one that costs money ($20 I think), but it's by far the best. Don't be too turned off though because the demo mode allows you to play for five minutes, but there is a trick where you can quick save and reload your save to restart the timer .

[takashirose]

Do any of them have super cd-rom functionality?

[Keranu]

Yes I believe all of them do.

[Necromancer]

I agree that Magic Engine is the best, but make sure that you download the system cards (google is your friend).  I've heard good things about Ootake, but haven't tried it out myself.

[malducci]

 ME is nice for people who are not technical or don't know how to use the command prompt, but it's not the best IMO. ME still uses hacks to get emulation working correctly, were as mednafen does not. Mednafen has the most accurate system emulation for PCE/TG/SGX and CD/SCD/ACD systems. If you want to run any future SGX or ACD or SGX+ACD () homebrew games, you won't be doing it on ME. ME uses hacks to run current ACD and SGX games, and only enables the hacks if it can identify the game. David M. doesn't have any future plans to change this either.

 Ootake is looking good ( it's based on PC2E), but still uses hacks to get emulation working correctly. Yame... I guess use it if you can get the others to work. Some people report the sound on Yame was nice.

[FM-77]

Magic Engine isn't particularly good. It requires twelve quad core CPUs at 5,7 GHz each and a quad-SLI Geforce 8800 Ultra setup as well as 32 GB RAM (rated at AT LEAST 1266 MHz) to run as it should (and that's just for the GUI itself - don't get me started on the actual emulation part). The PC Engine still needs a great emulator.

[Necromancer]

Ha-ha-ha-ha, Seldane.  You must be running a giant piece of crap for a computer if it can't handle Magic Engine.  My five year old system runs it just fine, and it was only a rung or two up from the cheapest new computer available at the time. 

[nat]

Back in like 1999, the computer I had at the time which was already a few years old, could run the DOS version of MagicEngine at almost full speed.

Nowadays I use a Macintosh and an emulator called TGEmu. There are a few games where the sound doesn't work, but the emulator is very fast even on my aging G4. It will do full screen video in the proper aspect ratio and can simulate scanlines. Even in this mode, it has no problem running at full speed. It is very configurable. Best of all, it is free.

But the only thing emulators are good for anyway are trying games before you decide whether or not to buy them. Anyone who uses an emulator as their gaming "console" is clearly a loser.

[FM-77]

Naw, it runs fine on my computer, but it didn't until I got that setup I posted earlier (32 gigs of RAM and stuff). ME needs a complete rewrite, it is the slowest piece of software I have encountered.

[malducci]

But the only thing emulators are good for anyway are trying games before you decide whether or not to buy them. Anyone who uses an emulator as their gaming "console" is clearly a loser.

And anyone who's using a MAC, let alone an older MAC, for their emulation needs is a loser  Actually, I think that's cool someone is using Charles MacDonald's emu - even if the source was ported to the MAC by someone else.

 Anyway, I can think of a bunch of (obvious) reasons why people would use an emulator over the real system other than trying out a game.

[nat]

Anyway, I can think of a bunch of (obvious) reasons why people would use an emulator over the real system other than trying out a game.

Dev & testing purposes of course, but I'm talking about "normal" people here. Losers losers losers!

[nodtveidt]

Mednafen ftw. But it's not an emulator for the faint of heart or the casual user, it requires command line knowledge to use (something missing from 95% of computer users) and a brain (something missing from 99% of all computer users).

Magic Engine isn't the best emulator for emulation purposes but there's no doubting that it is the easiest and most user-friendly. I use both Magic Engine and Mednafen for testing...Magic Engine for general testing and Mednafen when accuracy is important. But neither is 100% correct to a true machine, though Mednafen is leagues closer.

[Keranu]

Magic Engine isn't particularly good. It requires twelve quad core CPUs at 5,7 GHz each and a quad-SLI Geforce 8800 Ultra setup as well as 32 GB RAM (rated at AT LEAST 1266 MHz) to run as it should (and that's just for the GUI itself - don't get me started on the actual emulation part). The PC Engine still needs a great emulator.

Haha. The slowest part is booting it up and from what I understand, it's because it's checking the CD drives in your computer. I remember there was some beta release or something where it didn't have to do that and it felt so nice to boot!